Ihe benefits of investment banking and the benefits of working as an investment banker.
I worked at three major investment banks. I worked at Morgan Stanley, I worked at CIBC World Markets
and I worked at Petsky Prunier. At Morgan Stanley i worked as an intern
and i completed my coursework at Cornell in three and a half years so i received a full-time offer
for the following summer but then CIBC world markets gave me a large signing bonus and they
also allowed me to start in their industrial growth and services group i believe my start
date was February 23rd of 2004 which i believe is a monday and i started there
and there were a few benefits and i'm going to tell you what those benefits are so that you can
make a decision on whether you believe investment banking is something that you want to pursue
the first benefit of investment banking is that you learn incredibly quickly
i was able to put together complicated financial models without even touching the mouse
we have macros and shortcuts in excel and in word that would enable me to put together very
complicated and long financial models some of them had about 70 tabs and i could put together the
entire model without touching a mouse now before i had any training this would probably take me
weeks to do it but because i had substantial training and i could do things very quickly
you could put together and shorten the amount of time it takes you to do something from a few weeks
to just a few days the second thing that is really important is that you're actually making a pretty
good amount of money now on a per hour basis you're not making that much money but overall
i was 20 years old and i was making about 120 000 a year that's pretty good money that's probably
more money than about 98 of my friends so from a monetary perspective it's pretty good the next
thing which is beneficial about investment banking is that even as an analyst you do get to travel i
travel to san francisco los angeles austin texas i also went to michigan which was really nice and
a few other places boston a few times traveling is pretty nice because everything is paid for you get
to stay in nice hotels and i remember when i was growing up my parents would always make me share
a hotel room with them because they wanted to save money so it was pretty nice to be able to have my
own hotel room even though i was very young and order room service and everything that i paid for
was expensed by the company and additionally you frequently had some time off so you can
explore the city and walk around a little bit so traveling was nice the next thing is that you
would oftentimes work with ceos and cfos who would be three times your age but they would
respect you tremendously and they would always listen to you so i really like that the fact that
i had just graduated from college and i was only 20 years old however i was able to speak to and be
respected by and be in the same room as people who were worth 50 to 100 million dollars i remember
we had a meeting in Blackstone and some of the founders of blackstone were there i remember
meeting Herb Granath who was the founder of ESPN when we did a SPAC with him and just things like
that are experiences that when you're in your early 20s you are in the same room as very
wealthy and influential people and i don't know how many of you guys have seen Hamilton but in
the musical Hamilton there's a song by Aaron Burr who says i want to be in the room where it happens
and as an investment banker despite being very young you are in the room where it happens you're
in the room with decision makers and you're in the room with extremely powerful people
the next thing is that you're able to work with and this dovetails off what i said previously
you're able to work with and be exposed to some of the smartest people in the industry the next thing
is that a lot of your friends and family are jealous because you're making so much money
and you're held in very high regard and also because you're in the room with some of the most
powerful people in the country they are often interested in the stories that you have to tell
the next thing is you have unlimited black car service and uber as long as you leave
the office after around 7 or 7 30 p.m on weekdays and also unlimited uber on weekends you also have
all your meals paid for so as long as you stay in the office past around seven or eight then you
could expense all your meals and frequently the meal per diem that you have is about
thirty dollars now that's an easy way to get fat because if you're ordering take out every single
day from restaurants and you're not going to be eating the healthiest food however it is nice to
have food delivered to you and to be able to eat on the company's dollar and also with expenses
i know that for some groups in the industrial growth and services group at cibc World markets
it was head by Mark Henkels and he never checked the receipts so frequently i would
bring girls out to expensive dinners and these dinners will cost about 100 or 150
and i would expense it and no one ever said anything the next thing is being an investment
banker allowed me to have a lot more sex than i should have had now it's not for the reason that
you think it wasn't because i had elevated social status and that the girls were actually impressed
by me being an investment banker at such a young age no it wasn't about that at all he
said the reason i was able to have a lot of sex and much more than i should have in my early 20s
was because i would send out black car service to westchester county suffolk county nassau new
jersey to pick girls up at any time that i wanted i remember i sent a black car service out to pick
up this girl from suffolk county long island at about 3 30 in the morning so things like that
and then also bringing a girl out to an expensive dinner and giving the impression that you don't
care about money because you're expensing that meal anyway gives you the appearance
that you're really fun and that you're okay with splurging money to make sure that you show
that girl a good time and because of that girls are naturally attracted to those type of people
because they want to have good experiences so when you pick a girl up in a black car
and then you lavish her with an expensive dinner and you bring her back to your nice
apartment in midtown manhattan then it pretty much sells itself and she's just caught up in
the experience itself and then you end up having a lot more sex than you should have now she doesn't
know that you're expensing that dinner but i'm just telling you that one of the advantages
is that if you are able to work in a group whether it be an industry group or a product group
an industry group would be something like metals and mining and a product group would be something
like leverage finance or mergers and acquisitions now if you're able to work in one of those groups
that allow you to expense things then you will be able to take advantage of this opportunity however
there are some groups and some banks that are very strict on expenses when i worked at Petsky Prunier
all those expenses that i told you about as far as unlimited black car service and expensive dinners
they went away because Sanjay Chadda who i worked with at Petsky Prunier was much more strict in
checking all the receipts so when you work as an investment banker you're not going to know
beforehand the attitude of the group that you work in and how they treat expenses so that's something
that you're going to have to find out while you're on the job my overall recommendation for working
as an investment banker and in the next video i'm going to get to some of the drawbacks and
disadvantages of working as an investment banker but my overall recommendation would be to work as
an investment banker for six to 12 months and then to move on to the private equity space
or move on to a hedge fund or just to move on and become an entrepreneur and start your own business
so those are the advantages that i remember from being an investment banker where
you're able to network with some of the most intelligent and bright people in the industry
you learn incredibly quickly you learn so much finance you're able to get things done
very quickly as well you have unlimited black car service and also your expenses and if you're
in a great group then you're able to have more sex than you should additionally your
parents and friends are going to be jealous of you they shouldn't be jealous of you
and you're also going to make pretty good money so if you have any questions leave a comment
below i'm trying to be as honest with you as possible but in the next video i'm going to
do my thoughts on what the disadvantages of working as an investment banker are